Late Summer’s Must-See Art Shows on Long Island’s East End

The East End of Long Island has a storied artistic tradition, one that has always centered on its greatest natural attribute: not the sandy beaches, but its shimmering light.

“I wanted to go where de Kooning lived,” says painter Chuck Close, who became a part-time resident of the area in the early 1970s and whose latest show opened August 10 at Guild Hall in East Hampton. “I had heard what he said about the light out there. He said it was a combination of painting in Holland and Venice. I thought, ‘That sounds good to me.’”

The works in the following exhibitions may not all have been created on the East End, but the local light will help illuminate them, and it will flatter the whole experience of being there at the height of the area’s best season.

“Chuck Close: Recent Works” at Guild Hall, East HamptonFrom the beginning, Chuck Close has taken the oldest subject, the portrait, and breathed new life into it with endless invention. His latest experiments in breaking down the human face into its component parts, only to brilliantly reassemble them, are on view as of last Saturday in “Chuck Close: Recent Works,” East Hampton’s Guild Hall, until October 14.

The show features 27 works, all based on paintings and photographs, Close’s traditional source material. But the surprise is how deeply Close has gotten into new technology. For his luminous watercolor prints, for instance, the colors are blown on with a pigment printer.

“We created a palette of 12,500 different colors,” says Close. “But that wasn’t enough, so we added 10,000 more. And those colors became the vocabulary for the works.” The results—in pieces like Cindy (Smile), 2012, of the artist Cindy Sherman—show that Close’s latest explorations have kept his art, and the whole medium of portraiture, fresh.

“Pop Up 1: Montauk,” Old Montauk Highway, MontaukMontauk has been the hub of the East End’s youthful energy for a some time, so it makes sense that three young female artists are taking advantage of an undeveloped lot on its main highway for “Pop Up 1: Montauk,” conceived by Fabiola Beracasa and presented by the Art Production Fund in association with New Museum’s Joyce Sitterly and Gary Carrion-Murayari on Old Montauk Highway until September 8.

That pick-up truck you’ll see is a deconstructed and reassembled one, part of a sculptural comment on the heavy lifting of agriculture, courtesy of artist Virginia Overton.Olympia Scarry’s “Licks” are sculptures created by stacking pieces of rock salt, and they’re covered with drips meant to evoke Jackson Pollock’s famous paintings, done just a few miles away when Pollock was a resident of the Springs.

Anya Kielar’s new series of fabric paintings are made of tulle, gauze, and ripped canvas, and hung from clotheslines. She used a sun-printing technique to create the work—think of it as a new take on harnessing the light of the East End.

“Angels, Demons and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet” at the Parrish Art Museum, Water MillAny casual art fan is familiar with Jackson Pollock, and most have heard of Jean Dubuffet. But Alfonso Ossorio is a much less well-known name, and that’s why “Angels, Demons and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet” is so eye-opening.

The exhibition, on view at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill until October 27, has a distinctly East End flavor. Ossorio was a hugely wealthy collector and patron who once owned The Creeks, the vast, renowned estate in East Hampton right on Georgica Pond (now owned by mogul Ron Perelman).

But he was also an accomplished artist, and the show highlights the interplay of friendship and artistic influence among the three men. The works are impressive—like Ossorio’s drippy, trippy, and gorgeously messy Couple and Progeny, 1951—and it’s a treat to get a new perspective on how mid-century abstraction developed.

“The Still House Group” at the Fireplace Project, East HamptonGroup shows are a staple of New York City gallery shows in summer, and the same is true for the Hamptons. The Fireplace Project in East Hampton is presenting work by the eight members of The Still House Project, an artist collective usually based in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that also has summertime digs in Amagansett. The show is on view from August 23 through September 23.

As their subject, the artists are all tackling how their time in the country has affected their work. If Dylan Lynch’s installation Outdoor Shower, 2013, is any indication, they liked it.